Newly open museum takes visitors to historic Java

YOGYAKARTA (JP): A new museum that takes visitors to historic Java is now open in the ancient city of Yogyakarta.

Museum of Javanese Culture, which opened on Oct. 21, does not display its collections like most museums do. It does not use any windows to display them.

Rather, the initial 500 pieces of about 300 varieties -- mostly earthenware tools and other daily life appliances -- are displayed as naturally as an old Javanese community would have kept them in a house. Cultivation tools such as hoes, axes, machetes and knives of various models and sizes, for example, are just placed at random on a bamboo wall at the back of the museum.

A traditional earthenware kitchen set is also placed this way in a kitchen-like setting to resemble the actual scene. In another corner of the museum, earthenware and ceramics vessels are displayed in stacks in an old wooden buffet.

Director of Yogyakarta's Institute of Javanese Studies, Fadzar Vyaktatomo, said, "The main idea is to make the museum as close to the real setting of old Javanese community life as possible."

Film director Djun Saptohadi was chosen to design the museum's interior. "We believe he has the capability to avoid making the museum dull, to make it more lively," Vyaktatomo said.

The museum, located in Tembi hamlet, Timbulharjo village, Bantul subdistrict, eight kilometers south of the city, currently occupies a 900-square-meter room in the Institute of Javanese Studies 3,500 square-meter building. Vyaktatomo said it will be gradually expanded so that the whole building will be used by the museum and a library.

"We hope the museum will be able to supply information about the Javanese culture, especially about daily tools used by bygone Javanese communities," he said.

According to Vyaktatomo, even though there are many museums that have the ability to give information about the past culture, there are none that gives specific information about the tools the Javanese community used to use in their daily life.

The museum plans to add to its collections, so that eventually it will display about 5,000 different items. "We wish to accomplish this in two years," he said, adding that the museum uses L. Th. Mayer's book Een Blik in Het Javaansche Volksleven (A Glance at Javanese Community Life) published by E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1897, as a reference.

In this instance, he said, the museum does not consider the antiqueness of the collection as the most important element. "It's the completeness of the collection that matters, as the main goal is to give a comprehensive description of past Javanese community life," he said.

With such a consideration, therefore, the museum's management would not hesitate to make a replica of particular items should they no longer be able to find originals.

Among other items displayed in the museum are luku or waluku (buffalo-driven cultivating tool), lesung (rice milling equipment) and alu (rice stamper), dhakon (a child's game), traditional kris of different models and sizes, a traditional gambling game called cliwik and even a set of traditional opium inhaling paraphernalia called bedudan. (swa)